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Paul Delaroche's works were heralded as masterpieces in the nineteenth century, and the man himself was lauded in 1853 by one Italian critic as "at the summit of all living painters." But while his paintings themselves are still familiar to many, Delaroche the artist fell into almost total obscurity during the twentieth century. Stephen Bann addresses this lacuna in art scholarship, presenting an in-depth examination of Delaroche's career. Bann situates Delaroche and his wide-ranging oeuvre in the context of early nineteenth-century visual culture. From his early historical paintings to experimental pieces influenced by photography, the book analyzes each stage of Delaroche's artistic development--as well as his major masterpieces such as The Execution of Lady Jane Grey and The Princes in the Tower. Bann also analyzes the numerous reproductions of Delaroche's works in a variety of visual mediums, including engravings by Mercuri and Henriquel-Dupont, lithographs, popular prints, and the photographs that illustrated Delaroche's first retrospective catalog. An unparalleled and lushly illustrated study, Paul Delaroche restores a neglected master to his rightful place in nineteenth-century European art.

This collection of essays concentrates on the structures and connections which have made it possible, over the last two centuries, for an integrated regime of historical representation to emerge. It also touches upon the debate about the contemporary uses of history - whether it is a matter of new versus traditional approaches to the school curriculum, or of the need to historicize museums, houses and gardens and so avoid the blandness of an uninformed display.

The revealing letters of probably the most significant Scottish public intellectual and artist of the late 20th century.

Over the past 40 years, sculptor and installation artist Jannis Kounellis has established himself as a unique presence in the world of contemporary art. His work, whether included in temporary exhibitions or placed in semi-permanent installations, invariably lingers in the memory because of its forceful character and its ability to transform its immediate environment. Stephen Bann refers to Kounellis's working practice as a process of "making strange". In all his installations, the material impact of the work sets off a trail of associations. Potent examples include his 1969 installation of twelve tethered live horses in a gallery in Rome, the city where the prototypes of the equestrian monuments of Antiquity can still be seen, or his 1975 Civil Tragedy installation in which a hat-stand with black hat and coat against a gold-leaf background lit by a small lamp recalled the café society of Central Europe against a wall of Byzantine splendor. As an artist, Kounellis has found his special location in Rome. At the age of 20, he made the journey there from Piraeus, the ancient port of Athens, and began his career. His works continue to bear the hallmarks of his Eastern Mediterranean origin, as well as testifying to his concern with the links between Russian Modernism and the Byzantine tradition. Stephen Bann has not set out to write a conventional monograph about the artist. Rather, he looks at the underlying mechanisms in Kounellis's practice, suggesting the ways in which they are important in the broader context of late modernist art. He outlines the distinctive way in which Kounellis takes account of space as a necessary preliminary to working within it, and discusses the historical and cultural dimension to which Kounellis lays claim.

The English Civil War has become a frequent point of reference in contemporary British political debate. A bitter and bloody series of conflicts, it shook the very foundations of seventeenth-century Britain. This book is the first attempt to portray the visual legacy of this period, as passed down, revisited, and periodically reworked over two and a half centuries of subsequent English history. Highly regarded art historian Stephen Bann deftly interprets the mass of visual evidence accessible today, from ornate tombs and statues to surviving sites of vandalism and iconoclasm, public signage, and historical paintings of human subjects, events, and places. Through these important scenes and sometimes barely perceptible traces, Bann shows how the British view of the War has been influenced and transformed by visual imagery.

The "Cabinet of Curiosities," an early modern phenomenon some historians view as the forerunner of the modern museum, has evinced considerable interest in recent years. Increasing attention has also been paid to the history of travel and its documentation. The collector John Bargrave (1610-80) holds a unique position at the intersection of these two areas of cultural practice, yet this is the first in-depth study of his life, and it is the first to assess his significance for contemporary cultural studies.

At Stowe, 250 acres of parkland off er a complex web of views, pathways, statues, inscriptions, urns and ideas. Unlike its French floricultural precursors, Stowe presents sudden shifts of scene, abrupt revelations, as well as spots at which to stop to absorb the visual effect. There is natural beauty in the gardens of Stowe, but they serve a larger purpose than to please the eye. Beneath this facade of bucolic idyll lies a deeply important suggestion of man's relationship to nature. Accompanying an exhibition of historic and contemporary art at Stowe House, 'The Garden at War' explores the gardens at Stowe, built by a general, as a site of perpetual conflict in which the preconditions of destruction and creation are inescapable. If nature is understood to be original, then the garden is an ordered but un-orderly condition; a re-ordered vision of the natural order, a vision of nature disciplined by human action in a attempt to advance and yield control.0Starting with works by the preeminent neoclassical painters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain - whose distinct pictorial visions gave rise to an unmistakable relationship between the garden, the viewer and the natural world - the publication brings together an arrangement of interpretations and theories exploring metaphors and meanings within the very practice of gardening itself. Exhibition: Stowe House, Buckingham, UK (08.07. ? 09.09.2017)

Stephen Bann examines the arguments for the centrality of French modernist painting. He begins by focusing particularly on the notion of the modernist break, as it has been interpreted with regard to painters like Manet and Ingres. He argues that ‘curiosity’, with its origins in the seventeenth-century world-view can be a valid concept for understanding some aspects of contemporary art that contest the modern, suggesting ways of sidetracking the modern by adopting a lengthier historical view.